[ Excerpt from 'A History of Lives', by Dr Christine Hellgate. Required reading for BIO-AN-0813, The Thinkers of the World, Professor Franz Ash. ]
Dremizens are integral members of the global organic network of sentient fauna. In their tightly-structured communities, they are responsible for the metabolism of the ever-present psychic energy that manifests most commonly as what humans and several other species of humanoids know as dreams. Though they rarely interact with human society, and few are fluent in the common humanoid dialects, dremizens can be found wherever there is sentient life. (Refer to Appendix A, Diagram 3 for a comprehensive list of species and races with known sentience.)
Dremizens tend to be small in comparison to most humanoids, averaging in height around two feet tall. Because of their nearly completely self-sufficient communities, the evolution of their species has taken many environmentally-affected turns, but there are several traits common to the species as a whole. Each dremizen has a flap of muscle at the back of its head, concealing glands that produce metabolized psychic energy into the air. They also share a common grooved indentation located on the abdomen, minutely unique for each dremizen, similar to the human fingerprint.
One thing that sets dremizens apart from most species of the world is their ability to see and interact physically with psychic energy, which exists perpendicular to the perceptive plane of humans, and humanoids with psychic vision filters similar to the dormant human lens. (Refer to Appendix A, Diagram 4 for a table of sentient beings and their perceptive and practical psychic abilities.)
Although dremizens have come to be known colloquially as 'the creatures under the bed', they flourish in their own social groups, close to but apart from the dwellings of men. Each of these communities has a clearly defined structure, based mainly around the role each dremizen must play in the metabolization process of dream energy. Such groups, called 'clings', can range in size from anywhere between three or four to almost a hundred dremizens; the average population of a cling is about thirty members, although size varies based on the surrounding population of 'dreamers' (sentient beings susceptible to the effects of psychic dream energy) and the number of dremizen clings in the area.
There are three main jobs that a dremizen can perform in its community. Dream gathering generally falls to the most psychically perceptive and physically resourceful members of the group, who continuously canvass the local area collecting strands of psychic energy that has been processed into raw dreamstuff by sleeping dreamers. These strands are then turned over to the dream weavers, who are selected for their high intelligence and creative power. The strands of energy are 'woven' into tangible forms, which, in accordance with the laws of preservation of psychic energy, lose much of their potency as they gain a more physical form. The weavings are consumed by dream eaters, whose bodies metabolize the dulled dreams back into a purer form of psychic energy. This is released into the air from the glands protected by the flap of muscle on the back of the dremizen's head, and reabsorbed by nearby dreamers to repeat the cycle.
The necessity of the dremizens' roles in the ecological system has been debated by biologists and philosophers ever since the research of renowned anthropologist Peter Walker brought the mechanisms of their species into the public eye in 1839. It is widely accepted that the natural processes of psychic energy would not be possible without the presence of dremizens, and many believe that psychic overflow would consume the world but for their existence.
Occasionally, a dremizen will gain a taste for gathered dreams, unwoven and unmetabolized, with disastrous results. The substance is highly addictive, a druglike sensory overload, and an affected dremizen, called a 'dream parasite', will withdraw from its cling, often living independently and sustaining itself on raw dreamstuff. The psychic energy absorbed by the consumption of the raw dreams enhances the parasite's psychic perception and power, but tends to overwhelm its survival instinct. Known dream parasites are inevitably found dead of malnutrition or a similar affliction linked to neglect.